We first mentioned Urchin back in Q4 2007, when a new beta release of the product was introduced. It was acquired by Google back in 2005, and has been incrementally updated to pursue ever grander server-side missions, measurin’ and calculatin’ of reams upon reams of ones and zeroes. But don’t take it too seriously. Since it’s still in beta, it “should not yet be used for critical business decisions.”

The purpose of Urchin is straightforward. It “analyses traffic for one or more websites and provides easy-to-understand reports.” It covers several bases. It catalogues where visitors come from, how their use a site, what makes them stay and purchase/consume/use a service/product. And unlike Google Analytics, Urchin Software can operate even when confronting security firewalls on internal networks, or intranets.

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